The college administration insists that the programme has been temporarily halted. It did not announce the suspension and the college website still advertises the MPhil and PhD programme.
NCA Registrar Nadeem Hasan Khan told The Express Tribune that the programme hadn’t been dropped but “put on hold”. He said so far one student had been awarded an MPhil in communications and cultural studies since the programme was launched in 2000.
“This programme is research based,” he said. “We didn’t want to enrol people for enrolment’s sake.
The student awarded the MPhil degree is doing his PhD from abroad.
He only got admission [for his PhD] because our programme was so good.”
The registrar said that the college fell foul of the Higher Education Commission’s requirement that any department running an MPhil and PhD programme have at least four PhDs. “Two of our faculty members are studying abroad. When they return we will have the required faculty,” he said.
Khan said that the college would start an MA in communication and cultural studies before it resumes the MPhil and PhD programmes. He didn’t specify when it would be launched, but said that it would be no more than two years.
“We are already short of space. We are planning things and will do it soon,” he said.
Asked why the college hadn’t released a public message informing people about the programme being suspended, he replied, “Yours is the first query that has come to me about this programme. We will update our website soon.”
The MPhil and PhD programme was launched in 2000 by Dr Durre Sameen Ahmed, now retired, with the Academics Department renamed to the Department of Communication and Cultural Studies.
The programme aimed to “critically reclaim what is meaningful from a vibrant Muslim intellectual heritage while creatively relating it to contemporary Western discourses in Cultural Studies,” says the college website.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 9th, 2010.
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